#380: Miriam Schulman (Artist, Strategist, & Author) (pt. 2 of 2)

Today we released part two of our interview with Miriam Schulman. She’s a luxury-market messaging and pricing strategist for creative entrepreneurs. In addition to her business, she’s the author of the best-selling art business book, Artpreneur The Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Sustainable Living from Your Creativity. She also hosts The Inspiration Place podcast, that features experts on mindset, marketing, pricing, and more.

Miriam’s content has been featured in a variety of mass market mediums including Entrepreneur, Forbes, and the New York Times. Artists of all types will learn A LOT as Miriam demystifies marketing, positioning, and sales!
https://www.schulmanart.com/

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Announcer 0:18

Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast, Making Art Work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion, and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own, and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent, or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts, Andy Heise and Nick Petrella.

Andy Heise 1:01

Hi, Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heise.

Nick Petrella 1:04

And I'm Nick Petrella. Miriam Schulman is with us today. She's a luxury market messaging and pricing strategist for creative entrepreneurs. She's the author of the best-selling art business book, Artpreneur, the step-by-step guide to making a sustainable living from your creativity. She also hosts the Inspiration Place podcast that features experts on mindset, marketing, pricing, and more. Miriam's content has been featured in a variety of mass market mediums, including Entrepreneur, Forbes, and the New York Times. We'll have her website in the show notes so you can learn more about her and all of her initiatives. Miriam, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Miriam Schulman 1:41

Well, thanks so much for having me.

Nick Petrella 1:45

So, Miriam, based on your website, you have revenue streams from art,

Revenue Streams Without Spreading Thin

Nick Petrella 1:50

online classes, book sales, and probably other things. When you decide to pursue an initiative, are you thinking about how you might generate revenue at the start of the project or as it develops?

Miriam Schulman 2:03

Oh, that's a really good question. Um, let me just let people know though, that all these things you mentioned, they don't all happen at the same time. Um, so you know, I'm a big proponent that you can do anything you want, but not all at once. So, for example, I'm I'm no longer um offering my online art classes, like that is something that people could probably find my classes and buy it, but that's not something I'm promoting anymore. But yes, I'm always looking to be profitable. And usually when I start a project, it's because there's a demand for it. So when I started coaching, it was because there was a demand for it from my podcast listeners. So I see the demand in the marketplace.

Andy Heise 2:49

Yeah, got it. So the opportunity is there, it's just a matter of again positioning yourself to where you can actually go after it.

Miriam Schulman 3:00

Yeah, and not, and it's very important what I just said about not doing everything all at the same time, because I think a lot of not just artists, but business people, they think, oh, I'm gonna add this revenue stream and make more money, but really it's a zero-sum game because you might be adding something, but you're taking energy away from something else and you don't end up making more money. So one thing that I really encourage my clients to do is to niche down. And if you want to get to the top of the mountain, there are many paths to the top, but you're gonna be more successful if you're only following one of those trails instead of trail jumping. It's like you can't go up two trails at the same time. You'll never get to the top.

Nick Petrella 3:47

Yeah.

Miriam Schulman 3:47

I'm sure you see that with your clients as well.

Nick Petrella 3:50

Yeah, I mean, being well, I was just gonna say being musicians, portfolio careers, you get revenue streams from a variety of different things. And I think to your point, to kind of focus and not chase everything, I think there's uh that I think that's a val that's a very valid point that people should consider. Because when you're doing something, you're not doing something else. So that opportunity cost. Yeah.

Andy Heise 4:13

Yeah. Well, and and and I'm sure you see this with with your clients too, and with everybody, uh, but people have lots of ideas on things that they could do. So there's like generating, coming up with ideas is not necessarily the hard part. The hard part is deciding which ones to chase and which ones to go after. So, you know, I'm wondering, like for you personally and and the things that you've done, like what are some of those deciding factors that that say

Dollars Vs Nickels And Energy

Andy Heise 4:35

I'm gonna do right now, I'm gonna focus on this instead of this because okay, so it's a couple of different things.

Miriam Schulman 4:41

Like I have like little sayings for each one. I all the time I'm seeing people stepping over dollars to pick up nickels. So, like that those extra revenue streams that are fun and easy are usually the nickels. The harder things are usually the dollars. Um, the other thing I say to my clients is when there's gold, keep digging.

Andy Heise 5:03

Yeah.

Miriam Schulman 5:03

So you you're getting, if you're getting um, don't and and the third thing I say is making money sometimes is very boring. So where that gold is and you keep digging, like the those quarters and those nickels, those are fun. Like I'm gonna put my art on stickers, like that's fun. But like a sticker is five dollars, you know, and it probably costs you something to produce it. Yeah, so those are the three things like that I I keep in mind, and that's both for myself and for my clients. It's like, don't step over dollars to pick up nickels where there's gold, keep digging, and making money is very boring.

Andy Heise 5:42

Yeah, and I I think you talk about that in your book, how you folk focus on those high value production because you you have a finite amount of time, right? Time is the most limited resource we all have. And so focusing that time on those perhaps the dollars rather than nickels um is is sort of where you should maybe one one piece of the evaluation uh in in deciding what to do. Yeah.

Miriam Schulman 6:04

Well, not just your time though, because there that is the fallacy that people say, oh, if I only had more time. But if I were to wave a magic wand and give everybody four extra hours, we'd I mean, you you have a limited amount of energy.

Andy Heise 6:17

Yeah, yeah.

Miriam Schulman 6:18

And it's really you're managing your energy.

Andy Heise 6:21

Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. We'd find you know, doom scrolling for 28 hours a day versus 24 is is just as easy, right?

Miriam Schulman 6:30

And there's only a limited amount of genius time. So um you only have like about four hours of genius time. And I know they've done studies like on Beethoven and uh you know Hemingway and Darwin, whoever it is, it's like that's that's where you tap out.

Andy Heise 6:49

Yeah.

Nick Petrella 6:51

Present company excluded.

Andy Heise 6:55

Uh of course. So let's come back to the sales thing.

Asking For The Sale Without Awkwardness

Andy Heise 7:00

Uh a lot of a lot of artists are uncomfortable with selling, actually make doing the selling uh process. What do you notice uh is different about those who kind of get it and those who who don't?

Miriam Schulman 7:12

Uh, you know, it's really the willing to ask. They'll they'll do anything else but ask, would you like to buy this? Um, you don't if that feels too crass, there's there's usually questions that you can ask right before that becomes before that comes obvious. So in my world, it's where do you imagine this in your home in your office? Um, how would you like to pay? Um I see. So those are the types of things. Would you like to take this home today? So it that's essentially the same thing without using the word B U Y. But if you don't ask and people are saying, I like, I like your art, and you're just like, Thank you, yeah, they're not gonna beg you to buy the art.

Andy Heise 8:01

Yeah. Well, and and I'm wondering, like part of the selling process is handling objections too, right? Even if you do you muster up the the willpower to say, hey, you want to buy this, and they're like, uh, it's not the right time, or I don't have a place for it, or you know, I'm just how how do we do you coach people on on that?

Miriam Schulman 8:18

Yeah, the the biggest thing that um you have to overcome, and this is this is again, I'm gonna make this general to business rather than just art, but you'll see how this fits for art, is customers are worried about making a mistake. That's what they have to overcome, and they're afraid to be foolish. Now, in terms of being a great salesperson, I talk about the belief triad. I think this is like chapter one or two of my book. So you have to, and the first two things you've heard other people talk about. Um, you have to believe in yourself, you have to believe in what you're offering. But the third thing people don't talk about is that you have to believe in your buyer. So, what does that look like? If I am selling, it doesn't matter if I'm selling a $10,000 painting, a $10,000 coaching package, um, whatever, that I have to believe that my buyer deserves it too, because that is what's going through my buyer's mind. Not is Miriam worth it, is her art worth it, is her coaching worth it? They're thinking, am I worth investing $10,000 to get this thing that I want? Now that is why they may come up with some of these surface things, like at that time, I don't have room on my wall. Now, some of that might be true, some of it maybe they're just being polite to you because they don't like the art or whatever it is. But there's no convincing, which is good news. There's not about it's not about convincing the other person, it's about believing in the other person so they don't pick up your uncertainty that you have a hundred percent confidence that you're worth it, what you're selling is worth it, and the person you're selling to deserves it.

Nick Petrella 10:08

Yeah. So that works, I used to do a lot of sales, that works when you're interacting with someone. Right? Face to face or online, just however. How does that work when you don't have the the ability, the privilege to face-to-face sell your art? What could you do to be more empathetical?

Miriam Schulman 10:30

Um, great question. Um, so for those things that are face-to-face, you're usually talking about very high-ticket sales where you know you're having a conversation, whether that's over email or on the phone or in person or over Zoom. Um, but in terms of just buying something off a website, a website copy, uh, what I work on

Signal Excavation And Story-Based Positioning

Miriam Schulman 10:50

with positioning with my clients, I have a signature process. It's called signal excavation. And we excavate their stories and come up. What signals do they need to be sending out to attract those ideal collectors? So their customers, their collectors, their buyers understand that this is for them.

Nick Petrella 11:10

Yeah.

Miriam Schulman 11:11

That is the that's the key part.

Nick Petrella 11:13

Do you have one example? It could be anything, of of a signal for the listeners who Yeah, uh, lots of examples.

Miriam Schulman 11:22

Okay. So here's here's how that might work. Thinking of one of my recent clients. So his name is Neil Forster. He's a retired Navy officer, and he does pet portraits. So what he had on his web, you know, he had nice pet portraits, everything was nice. He said, I care about the eyes, blah, blah, blah. And you know, that's very nice, but very generic, kind of safe. So when we were excavating his stories, I asked him, So, Neil, I bet you had to become really good at reading faces when you were a police officer. Yes. So that story, that that's what makes him different than other people who are capturing the expression of a dog.

Nick Petrella 12:15

Yeah.

Miriam Schulman 12:16

You see, and that makes him become not only the obvious choice, but the only choice.

Nick Petrella 12:20

Yeah. So so really in signal, also thought of as value propositions, what's your unique value propositions? Would that be accurate to say?

Miriam Schulman 12:30

Yeah, yeah, it is. I I like to call it signal excavation because I'm excavating these stories. It's a little like like value proposition, people think of it's just like price and benefits. And you see how this is actually a story that goes beyond that. So if you think about some of the most successful brands, what are they actually selling? Yeah, Nike. They're not talking about how great the sneakers are. They are saying just do it. So what are they really selling? Motivation.

Nick Petrella 12:57

Yeah, confidence. That's right.

Miriam Schulman 12:58

That's not a value proposition. That's what signal excavation looks like.

Andy Heise 13:03

I love the I love your use of the term, I like excavation too, because it's like it's already there. We just need to surface it, right? It's not we don't need to we don't have to fabricate or manufacture, but it's already in you, right?

Miriam Schulman 13:15

Right. Like I'm going back to many different layers. Right. Um, if you want me to give another example, uh an artist I worked with had uh a lot of childhood trauma. And she lived in um San Francisco. So she was telling me the story about how she would go up on the roof um and just imagine her flying across the sky. And so this is a sky painter. So then when we had when we got to that story, I was like, okay, your paintings are for escape. Now, her paintings are not for survival, survivors of sexual trauma.

Nick Petrella 13:57

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Miriam Schulman 13:57

That see the difference?

Nick Petrella 13:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great.

Miriam Schulman 14:01

Right. So talk, I said talk about escape in your paintings. That is what you are really selling, escape.

Nick Petrella 14:08

And so the first example you gave, it could have been both a value proposition, but it gets much clearer now what you're talking about, the signal, the story. Yeah. I think that yeah, that's great. I like that. That's great.

Andy Heise 14:19

And just one more thing on that. You know, I think to back to your point about um art school training and that sort of thing, uh, you know, we there's a lot of um focus put on you know artists' statements for their body of work and that sort of thing. But I what I find is oftentimes it's in artist speak, it's in artist language, and it's not really for uh an outside audience to view and connect to. Oftentimes it's it uses, you know, very sort of particular language that only other artists would tap into and understand.

Miriam Schulman 14:52

Yeah, so the signal excavation process gets them away from that because now they can talk about their art on a philosophical level that will still appeal to the gallerists and the art world people and to their ideal collectors.

Andy Heise 15:07

Yeah, I was walking through a sculpture garden um and I'm reading the little placards in front of the sculptures, and they're just not, I'm not connected, like it's cool. I I read the words, I see the words, I just I don't get, you know, I'm not feeling what I think they're trying to put down. And that's just a sculpture garden in a park for public art, you know. It's like, come on, let's like what do you want us to what do you want us to feel, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Miriam Schulman 15:32

It's hard because a lot of artists are not tapped into the their why. Um it's they'll say if you ask artists why do they do it? Oh, because I love to.

Andy Heise 15:44

Yeah.

Miriam Schulman 15:45

Well, that's not gonna sell it. Yeah, like you're you know, a baker is not gonna say, buy my cookies because I love making cookies, it's so relaxing.

Nick Petrella 15:54

Yeah. That's right. Well, this next question actually kind of ties into signal,

Social Media Decline And Better Bets

Nick Petrella 16:00

I imagine. How active should artists be on social media? And do you prefer any platforms over others?

Miriam Schulman 16:07

Yeah, great question. This was something that Harper Collins and I butted heads on because my book came out in January 23. So it was being edited in 22. And if you have my book, you'll notice I de-emphasize social media. And they were like, oh, well, she's she's a woman in her 50s, she she's old-fashioned. That's why she's not talking about it. How come you're not talking about TikTok? So um, when I got that developmental edit, I realized that I hadn't emphasized enough why social media was going to quickly become a thing of the past. So I was actually ahead of the curve in 2023 when I was saying this. Um, when I published Artpreneur, um, the average engagement rate on Instagram was below 1%. It was 0.6. The average engagement rate now in 2026 is 0.36. By the way, that's average. Right. So the top of the average are sports teams.

Andy Heise 17:08

Right.

Miriam Schulman 17:09

Oh, and colleges with sports teams. Now, I do want to answer your question about which social media platform. So if you consider LinkedIn a social media platform, so the two platforms that I think have the most traction are LinkedIn and YouTube. LinkedIn and YouTube. And myself have gone um very heavy in both of those places. And it real it's been really successful for me and very successful for my artists as well.

Nick Petrella 17:40

Yeah, that's good. That's good.

Andy Heise 17:46

When an art um again back to the artists finding audience, when when an artist comes to you and says and has no clue who their audience or who their customers might be, how do you what where do you start?

Miriam Schulman 17:58

Um that's a great question. So, first of all, is local. You want to become a micro celebrity. I'm sure it's true with musicians too. Like start local, be be the micro celebrity of where you live. And where we said um about not if not social media, then what? So I just want to make sure my message doesn't get misconstrued. You want to be able to find your audience off of social media. So many of the most the many of the biggest people on social media, they didn't get famous on social media, like Taylor Swift. She's not famous because of Instagram. She has a lot of followers on Instagram because she's famous off of Instagram. So, how do you do that? It's getting press. So start local with press and build from there.

Nick Petrella 18:51

Any tips on how to do that?

Miriam Schulman 18:54

Yeah, don't wait for them to come to you. So it's a lot easier now with Chat GPT. So you can just run a prompt like find um and and also, okay, so let me make this very actionable. So you you say you coach musicians mostly or anybody.

Nick Petrella 19:12

We teach arts entrepreneurship, so it could be anyone.

Miriam Schulman 19:15

Okay, everything. Okay. So the biggest mistake that I see artists making is they want to be publishing art magazines instead of looking at like, well, who is their art really for? So one of my artists, um, Grace, is an underwater artist. So she's a diver and she paints underwater scenes. So she got great traction by going to scuba news and X-ray magazine. So going to where your collectors are.

Andy Heise 19:45

Yeah. That makes sense.

Miriam Schulman 19:47

Not where your peers are.

Andy Heise 19:51

And that fits in. There's another portion of your book where you talk about channels that you own versus that you just other people own that you just get to play around in and the importance of owning some of your channels. You don't have to own all of them, but owning at least some important ones. I think that's what you're getting at here.

Miriam Schulman 20:08

Well, the thing about the um social media is it's all controlled by the algorithm.

Andy Heise 20:12

Yeah, we have zero control, right? Zero control.

Miriam Schulman 20:14

So, and people think, oh, the engagement rate, well, what can I do differently to increase the engagement rate? Well, okay, so let's say you get it to 2%.

Nick Petrella 20:24

Yeah.

Miriam Schulman 20:25

I mean, like, really? Yay. Because that's the top, you know, two out of a thousand people. So what is the alternative? Well, if you can build an email list, right, there is a 24 to 40% open rate on email. And even if you say 24%, that's 24 people out of a hundred. Yeah. In order to get 24 people to engage with you on social media, you need 6,000 people.

Nick Petrella 20:52

Yeah. Yep.

Miriam Schulman 20:54

6,000 versus 100. So it's a lot easier to build an audience of paying people. You got I don't you've probably heard about the thousand truth fans. Yeah.

Nick Petrella 21:06

Yeah.

Miriam Schulman 21:06

Like if you have a thousand people on your email list and 240 people are opening it up, that is a much better way to build your business than uh two people out of a thousand. And that's only if you're like the top of the top. Most likely it's one person or half a person, if that's no, no, I get it.

Nick Petrella 21:28

And I I always say it's a difference between fishing and hunting. Really. Because you're just dropping a line in on social media.

Miriam Schulman 21:36

It's not even fishing, though, at this point. It's really like a slot machine, it's gambling.

Nick Petrella 21:41

That's that's right. Yeah.

AI As A Tool Not A Crutch

Nick Petrella 21:43

So let's change gears here and talk about AI. Since we're in the thick of it, and uh you had a podcast episode on it, actually, recent actually a couple you've mentioned AI. What are the benefits for arts entrepreneurs and what are the detriments?

Miriam Schulman 22:00

Um, great question. So, first of all, the worst thing that artists can do, uh, or business people or any you know person trying to do is you go to whatever your favorite social AI platform is, Claude, Chat GPT, it doesn't matter which one, and you say, write me an email. Okay, or write my artist statement. Then you're gonna get the fluff that Andy was talking about earlier. Very generic stuff. So you can use those tools, but you absolutely have to do that excavation process first to understand your story, who you are, what makes you unique. And so you have to be get better at asking questions.

Nick Petrella 22:43

Yeah. That's great. Yeah, that actually came up a couple of podcasts ago. The answers are out there, you got to ask the right questions.

Announcer 22:51

Yeah.

Andy Heise 22:53

Um, uh do you see resistance to using AI from any of your clients?

Miriam Schulman 22:58

Yes, I do. Because if you look at my YouTube channel, like the past 20 episodes or so, um, the least popular ones are the ones where I talk about AI.

Nick Petrella 23:08

Yeah. Yeah. So let's check that out. Yes. Yeah. And we'll link to all your websites. We'll have that there on our show notes.

Miriam Schulman 23:16

Yeah. My my most popular one is the four types of content. Because they're looking to get Instafamous. Right. So of course, I I let them know this is content you can be using not just on social media, but also in your emails. Yeah. Or to pitch the press, because that's really what my message is.

Andy Heise 23:36

Do you think do you and and maybe this is pushing pushing it too far, but do you think you said the biggest detriment is just having it generate stuff for you? Uh I where I thought what I thought you were gonna say, what I was hoping you're gonna say, is the biggest detriment would be ignoring the use of AI tools in your art practice.

Miriam Schulman 23:53

Oh, yeah, I think that's because that's my assumption. I use AI tools all the time. Um, it makes me much more efficient. But even then, there's a study that Harvard Business Review did, and that is um AI for for marketing, that AI can, if you're already good at marketing, it's gonna make you 20% better. But if you're not good at it, it's gonna make you worse.

Andy Heise 24:20

100% interesting.

Miriam Schulman 24:22

So which are you? So that is why you can't skip over learning what good marketing is.

Nick Petrella 24:28

Yeah.

Miriam Schulman 24:28

So you can use it, but it's very dangerous if you're using it wrong or you don't understand what's coming if what's coming out is good or bad. That's right.

Andy Heise 24:38

Excellent point. The uh the SNAP organization, Strategic National Arts Alumni Project, uh just did a uh survey of of artists and AI use, and they found the the consist the findings are consistent across a lot of these other domains, and it says that uh subject matter people with domain expertise that are leveraging AI find the most benefit. Um people that don't know what they're doing with it obviously don't get as much benefit. So looking at it 100% framing it as a tool rather than as a solution.

Miriam Schulman 25:06

Yeah, and it's not just about getting better with the tool, it's also understanding the principles that you're trying to get it to do.

Nick Petrella 25:13

That's right.

Miriam Schulman 25:14

So it's just like you know, if you were a musician using a synthesizer, yeah, I mean, you have to know how to use that tool, but you also have to know what good music is.

Nick Petrella 25:23

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. It's like giving a knife to a chef or a five-year-old.

Miriam Schulman 25:27

Exactly, exactly.

Studio Time And Pricing Tips

Andy Heise 25:31

So, Miriam, you continue your art practice while running your coaching business, um, hosting your podcast, writing books, et cetera. How do you protect the studio time uh that you need? Um, and does it ever feel like these two sort of identities are at odds with each other?

Miriam Schulman 25:48

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I put more of my creativity now into my YouTube videos than I do into my visual artwork. So that's where the balance comes from.

Andy Heise 25:58

Yeah, finding finding artistic outlets within other realms.

Miriam Schulman 26:02

You can't do everything all at once.

Nick Petrella 26:05

Yeah. That's really good. That might even be a sound bite we use. So before Andy kicks off the final three questions, do you have any uh tips for pricing visual art? So maybe your top three tips for how artists should price their art.

Miriam Schulman 26:21

Yeah, um, one thing very practical is I know there's people who use square inch method versus linear inch. I would use linear inch method, square inch method is gonna get um too cheap on the on your low end and too high in the high end. So linear is just gonna make more sense for your collectors that the price goes up more gradually. Um basically, whatever prices you are. This is tip number two, they're too low. Period. They're too like I would say out of a hundred artists, maybe two artists, it's too high. Cause they and that's a scarcity mindset too. By the way, they feel they're never gonna paint something this good again, so they price it really high. Um what would be tip number three? Uh, something we already talked about, not using other artists to price your art. Don't crowdsource your prices.

Nick Petrella 27:10

Yeah. Good.

Final Three Questions And Farewell

Andy Heise 27:13

Well, Miriam, we've reached the point of the interview where we ask all of our interviewees the same three questions. And the first question is what advice would you give to others wanting to become an art entrepreneur?

Miriam Schulman 27:24

Okay. Well, first thing is you have to make the opportunities happen. Um, be willing to hear no. You're not going to get the yeses unless you get a lot of no's along the way.

Nick Petrella 27:37

Great, great. What can we do to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?

Miriam Schulman 27:45

Oh, that's beautiful. I think it starts with education. So making sure that data gets taught in our schools. Like make sure pe the kids are growing up with that appreciation.

Andy Heise 27:57

Yeah. Lastly, what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice that you've been given?

Miriam Schulman 28:07

Okay, so this advice goes back to when I actually worked on Wall Street. I'll never forget this interview where the interviewer had said to me, it's not so much about the money that you lose, it's about the opportunities that you lose, that you could have made money. And that is very true in the art world. It's all those opportunities that you don't go after that is what's going to cost you. It's not the rejections, it's the ones you don't go for.

Nick Petrella 28:41

Yeah, that's a great, great way to end. Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us. It's really it was enjoyable just hearing how you help artists recognize opportunities and that entrepreneurship and business aren't bad words.

Miriam Schulman 28:58

No. Well, thanks so much for having me.

Announcer 29:01

Thanks, Miriam. Thanks for listening. If you like this podcast, please subscribe. Visit Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast dot com to learn more about our guest and how you can help support artists, the arts, and this podcast.